Elon Musk and Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino at the Dec. 18, 2018, unveiling of a one-mile tunnel beneath a Hawthorne city street. Buscaino is wearing a YIMBY — Yes in My Backyard — T-shirt celebrating news that SpaceX would be renting space at the Port of Los Angeles. (Courtesy of the office of Joe Buscaino)

SpaceX could soon build a facility in the Port of Los Angeles that would manufacture the Starship — a spacecraft the Hawthorne company wants to eventually send to Mars.

The facility would potentially bring in 300 jobs. City officials, meanwhile, have expressed hope that it could lure other aerospace companies to San Pedro and boost the South Bay’s reputation as a high-tech hub.

Port commissioners are expected to weigh issuing a permit during a closed session on Thursday, Feb. 6, which would open the way for SpaceX to build a rocket manufacturing plant on Terminal Island. The permit would then go before the board in open session at its Feb. 20 meeting.

SpaceX was to lease this 18-acre site on Terminal Island to build components for its 4,400-ton BFR, renamed Starship, rocket. Instead, the company will move the prototype operation to Texas, although the full-scale production will remain in Hawthorne. The site was the former Southwest Marine Shipyard. Photo By Charles Bennett 5/23/2018

This undated photo shows San Pedro’s World Cruise Center. SpaceX’s future Terminal Island rocket manufacturing plant has some community leaders believe the port town hoping for a boom in new development that already has begun. (Image via Google Maps)

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The 18-acre site on Terminal Island eyed by SpaceX for a manufacturing facility to build “commercial transportation vessels.” Image via the Port of Los Angeles.

A photo Tweeted by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Dec. 24 shows a prototype of the Starship spacecraft at the company’s Boca Chica launch site in Texas. (Courtesy photo)

SpaceX’s Starhopper lifts off the ground Tuesday, Aug. 27, during a test flight of the Starship prototype at the Hawthorne-based company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas. (Screenshot via SpaceX Youtube)

SpaceX’s Starship prototype, the Starhopper, as it stood on the launch pad July 24 at Boca Chica, Texas. (Youtube screenshot)

The SpaceX faring catching boat was going through testing on Tuesday January 22, 2019 with a large crane lowering a used faring into the net stretched above the boat in the Port of Los Angeles. Photo By Chuck Bennett

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine toured SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019 with Spacex founder Elon Musk to see the progress the company is making to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station from American soil as part of the agency?s Commercial Crew Program. Nasa Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken who will pilot the capsule also attended. SpaceX will carry NASA astronauts to the space station on the company?s Crew Dragon spacecraft, and help return the ability to fly American astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil. This is an important step toward sending the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024, as part of NASA?s Artemis program. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine toured SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019 with Spacex founder Elon Musk to see the progress the company is making to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station from American soil as part of the agencys Commercial Crew Program. Nasa Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken who will pilot the capsule also attended. SpaceX will carry NASA astronauts to the space station on the companys Crew Dragon spacecraft, and help return the ability to fly American astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil. This is an important step toward sending the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024, as part of NASAs Artemis program. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)

SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off Thursday with the Arabsat 6A communications satellite. The world’s most powerful operational launcher lifted off from pad 39A at NASAâs Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT), and its three first stage boosters landed less than 10 minutes later — two back at Cape Canaveral and one on a drone ship at sea. April 11,2019. Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer

The SpaceX Dragon capsule returned to the Port of Los Angeles Thursday August 29, 2019. The is the first capsule to have completed three trips to the International Space Station and return to earth. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)

The SpaceX Dragon capsule returned to the Port of Los Angeles Thursday August 29, 2019. The is the first capsule to have completed three trips to the International Space Station and return to earth. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)

The SpaceX Dragon capsule returned to the Port of Los Angeles Thursday August 29, 2019. The is the first capsule to have completed three trips to the International Space Station and return to earth. The side of the capsule shows a Apollo 50th anniversary tribute. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)

Elon Musk and Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino at the Dec. 18, 2018, unveiling of a one-mile tunnel beneath a Hawthorne city street. Buscaino is wearing a YIMBY — Yes in My Backyard — T-shirt celebrating news that SpaceX would be renting space at the Port of Los Angeles. (Courtesy of the office of Joe Buscaino)

“I am excited,” said L.A. City Council Joe Buscaino, “by the renewed opportunity for SpaceX to build its next generation of Mars-destined rockets at the Port of Los Angeles.”

SpaceX declined to comment because it was not a done deal yet.

But if approved, SpaceX would manufacture its 100-passenger Starship spacecraft and the giant rocket Super Heavy on the property, directly across the channel from what will be San Pedro’s new waterfront development. Both are designed to be reusable.

The rockets, too massive to transport on highways, would be manufactured at the port and then taken by ship to Cape Canaveral, Florida, or Texas for launch.

It was only a year ago that the private aerospace company company, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, pulled the plug on an already-approved lease for 18 acres on Terminal Island, saying it could do the work faster in Texas.

“They thought they could do better in Texas,” said Branimir Kvartuc, communications director for Buscaino, who represents San Pedro.

But after encountering complications with that plan, SpaceX came back to Los Angeles. And, it turns out, the property is still available.

With the new lease essentially a recast of the expired 2018 version, it stands a chance of sailing through the approval process — or at least supporters hope so.

At a 90-minute, all-hands-on-deck meeting Wednesday, Jan. 22, in City Hall, representatives of SpaceX, the L.A. port and Los Angeles gathered around a table to see if there was a way to reactivate the 2018 lease without starting a lengthy negotiation process all over again.

That wasn’t possible, the group was concluded. But a new lease offering the same terms perhaps could be expedited, allowing SpaceX to get its plant up and running quickly.

In what was described as a handshake deal until specifics could be worked out at that time, Branimir Kvartuc, communications director for Buscaino, said “everybody’s on board” to make the San Pedro location work, though it’s not a done deal yet.

The agreement had to be done with lightning speed, he said, to meet the needs of SpaceX. The dream? A self-sustaining city on Mars in about a decade.

Buscaino has been closely involved in the lease process and said in a written statement on Wednesday, Jan. 29, that having SpaceX on the waterfront would be a huge benefit.

“Having SpaceX at the LA Waterfront in San Pedro and Wilmington,” Buscaino said, “would complete an economic development trifecta that will include AltaSea and the new LA Waterfront development.”

In March 2018, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners approved an environmental review for the earlier SpaceX permit for Terminal Island, clearing the way for a 10-year lease, with up to two 10-year extensions. That earlier lease was approved in April 2018. SpaceX would have paid $1.38 million a year in rent.

The Starship spacecraft — which will eventually take folks around the moon and travel to Mars — was based on the prototype formerly known as the Big Falcon Rocket that was completed at a facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The loss of that first agreement hit hard. On Jan. 16, 2019, Buscaino announced that the deal was off, tweeting that he felt “crushed.”

The rocket maker already leases 8.1 acres in San Pedro’s Outer Harbor, where rocket boosters and other spacecraft returning from orbital missions can be docked. But the addition of a SpaceX rocket manufacturing plant was seen as a major coup — and losing it, at the time, was painful for those who had counted on its star power and hype to give San Pedro an added shine.

The new proposed Terminal Island manufacturing facility would be used to build “commercial (space) transportation vessels” so massive they would have to be moved by water to launch sites.

The property is where the former Southwest Marine Shipyard once stood.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen came to Buscaino’s office, Kvartuc said, on Jan. 16, a year after the announcement that the earlier deal was off, to broach the possibility of resurrecting the idea.

“They thought it was going to be faster and they thought Texas would be it for them,” Kvartuc said, “but they needed more capacity, they needed the Port of Los Angeles.”

Preliminary plans would be to erect a membrane structure, similar to the port’s cruise baggage terminal near the Battleship Iowa, to begin work as soon as possible.

“The way it was explained to the councilman is that they simply want to move faster and they wanted that capacity” at the port, Kvartuc said.

“There really is a space race happening,” he added, “so speed is of the essence for them.”

If approvals move forward, it is anticipated that the new facility will employ 300 people, with about 70% of the ranks coming from SpaceX’s Hawthorne location and new hires making up the other 30%, he said.

Two years ago, the prospects of a new SpaceX plant being established on the waterfront set off a wave of local enthusiasm. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made the formal announcement, heralding the coming to the port of a rocket capable of flying missions to Mars.

Seen as a potential magnet for other high-tech industries that would populate a new “Silicon Harbor,” the SpaceX Terminal Island plant was also viewed as a boost to San Pedro’s new waterfront redevelopment. Talks already were underway to establish a lunchtime ferry service between the plant and the mainland, where the San Pedro Public Market is set to open in 2021.

“The councilman wants to get them up in 30 days in order to promote the Port of Los Angeles as a place where government will work with industry to make things happen quickly,” Kvartuc said.

And the hope is that other tech companies will follow.

“SpaceX,” Kvartuc said, “is the chum bucket for other industries to come into San Pedro.”

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Donna Littlejohn has covered the Harbor Area as a reporter since 1981. Along with development, politics, coyotes, battleships and crime, she writes features that have spotlighted an array of topics, from an alligator on the loose in a city park to the modern-day cowboys who own the trails on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. She loves border collies and Aussie dogs, cats, early California Craftsman architecture and most surviving old stuff. She imagines the 1970s redevelopment sweep that leveled so much of San Pedro's historic waterfront district as very sad.

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